Fear

by Grant Flint

The old man entered the bedroom and closed the door. Just before the door clicked shut, he saw what had been concealed on the back of it—a white sheet of paper with one word in the middle. The word, composed of irregular letters cut from newspaper print, said: “TODAY.”

For a moment the old man stood perfectly still. Then he retreated slowly backward, staring at the word, his mind numb the way he had attempted to make it when seeking sleep during the night. He couldn’t think of any one thing definite, myriad thoughts swirling in upon him. Then as the rear of his legs bumped into the bed, the first line of the telegram returned to him: “Your time has come.” He shook his head slowly, staring at the word on the middle of his door. He found himself moving toward the door as though in a dream. As he came closer, the muscles in his face tightened, pulling his mouth open. Suddenly he reached out and tore at the word. His fingers ripped part of the glued sheet away, and then in a frenzy he clutched and ripped with both hands, shredding the letters on the white paper until only a formless mutilation of scraps remained glued to the door. Breathing hoarsely, the old man continued to scrape furiously at the shreds, and then in enraged frustration he yanked the door open and limped hurriedly past the frightened cleaning girl to the kitchen where he grabbed a paring knife.

“Mr. MacIver! Mr. MacIver!” the girl cried as he hurried back toward the door.

The old man stopped and glared wildly at her. “You! You did it!”

“No! Didn’t do nothing! Nothing!” the girl said, backing up with her hands in front of her. As the old man started toward her, the girl turned at once and ran to the open front door. She was nearly to the street when the old man came from the house.

Breathing heavily, face still contorted, the old man watched the girl until she turned the corner a block away. Then he looked about wildly on the ground, picked up the poker and with the knife in his other hand entered the house. Glaring to left and right, weapons ready, he searched through all the rooms on the first floor and then the second. He found nothing.

Gradually a heavy fatigue replaced the fevered activity of anger and frustration. The old man returned to the bedroom door and started to scrape with the knife on the bits of paper. Finally he sighed deeply and dropped the knife. He went to the bed, sat down a moment, thought of resting for awhile, then sighed again and began to dress. After he had his trousers on, he took the telegram from his pocket and read it again. “Your time has come. What you fear most. Terror of terrors.”

“Today,” he thought, looking at the door. Any time now. This was something specific anyway. Something a man could fight. No joke. Somebody meant it. Well, whatever it was, he thought, they were going to have a fight on their hands. Not scared of anything, living or dead.

But the old man knew he was going to the police now. He didn’t think about it, didn’t make up his mind, but he found himself leaving the house. He locked the front door and then looked for the cat.

“Cat!” he called. “Cat! Damn it, where are you? Cat!”

He walked to the street, looked back briefly at the tall, dead grass on either side of the house, then started slowly toward the pay phone eight blocks away.

“Gettin’ riled up for nothin’,” he muttered, thinking about his reactions of the morning. “Bad as Timmy.” He remembered the time a few months before when his grandson had been at the house and he’d played the ghost game with him, a game he’d played with many children, including his son, Timmy’s father, when he’d been about Timmy’s age. Simple thing. An uneven breeze coming in an open window causing a door, preferably a squeaky door, to close almost, then open, then nearly close. “Slowly, slowly, slowly,” he told Timmy, “the ghost slowly opens, slowly, slowly opens the door.” And Jimmy had stood there bug-eyed, watching the door in the flickering light from the fireplace.

Of course, Claire, the boy’s mother, had been upset when she heard about it, but… that was the way it was nowadays. The “younger generation” was so damn scared of everything, they couldn’t put up with a little old-fashioned spookin’.

Claire telling him that Timmy would end up hating him just like the boy’s father had. Well, hell, the boy’s father had been so damn pussy-footed like his mother, what could you expect? Even died pussy-footed, a stroke at thirty-four years of age. Now what kind of fool thing was that to do? Hard to ever believe he’d had a son like that, any blood of his in that quivering namby-pamby.

And now Claire coming around once a week—would be around tonight or tomorrow—to “look out for him.” Hell. What she was “looking out for” was for him to croak. So she could sell his house and lot for that big money them apartment house people were always putting up. She knew what that young punk of a so-called doctor had said. Warned him to get his pressure down. 185/115. So what? So his kid had had a stroke. So? He’d already outlived the kid by 42 years! Ha! He’d outlive Claire, too, outlive the whole damn bunch, just the way that bastard cat had outlived all the cats in the area. Weren’t nothing could knock off that damn cat!

The old man was more than halfway to the pay phone now, walking slowly, head down, when a teen-ager on a bicycle rode up behind him on the sidewalk, blew his horn, then sped by giggling.

The old man was so startled by the horn, he nearly fell. “Damn them! Damn them all!” he muttered in frustration as he watched the youth hurrying on.

He hesitated for a moment, feeling an unfamiliar numbing fatigue in his legs and the beginning of dizziness. “Ah, damn police wouldn’t do nothin’ anyway,” he mumbled. “Just think I was crazy or somethin’.”

The old man remembered the only time he had asked anything from the police. He had received no satisfaction. It was about the noise and rowdyism of youths returning home from high school in the afternoons. It seemed to the old man that they picked the sidewalk in front of his property to congregate, make wisecracks, and mock fight. One group would go on, then another would come along, stop, and repeat the scene.

The neighborhood had deteriorated fast in the past few years from the way the old man remembered it. The aged Victorian houses had been torn down to put up apartment houses. Although he’d received and continued to receive repeated offers from real estate developers—offers which were becoming increasingly insistent, almost belligerent—the old man refused to sell his house, which stood alone now on the huge weed-grown lot, an isolated reminder of the past.

Those kids, the old man thought. No respect for themselves or anybody else. Especially an old man. He’d run them off enough times, shook his fist at them. But it did no good. Youth. Damn youth. It was hard to say which was worse, those pesky developers, who would not give up, hounding him—acting almost crazy at times, as though he were the villain, and they were the good guys—or the damn kids. All of them, the whole mass of them, developers, kids—never letting up—and him just an old man, alone, just wanting to live where he’d lived, just wanting to live here till he died. Kids. Damn kids.

“Damn cops won’t help an old man.”

But he continued to hesitate, unable to decide whether to go on or return home. The newspapers on the rack at the corner made the decision for him. He placed the quarters he had intended to use for the pay phone into the slot, took a newspaper, and slowly trudged back to the house.

“Cat?” he called tiredly as he came into the front yard.

Before entering the house, he turned to look once more for the cat. “Where are you, damn it? Cat?”

Cat was as tough as he was. And old. Hind legs paralyzed, dragging itself around. Weren’t nothing could kill that cat. Dumb, but unbeatable.

The old man went in, locked the door, walked the final steps to the living room chair. He sat down and leaned back, feeling more fatigued than he could remember. He closed his eyes to rest a moment before reading the paper, not unwilling to fall asleep if it happened that way. But suddenly the word “TODAY” jumped into his thoughts and he jerked up, opened his eyes and saw his wife’s photo on the mantel. “TODAY.” He pushed it out of his mind, wouldn’t think about it. That cowed look, he thought, staring at the picture, those big sorrowful eyes. But there was something else there, too, he thought tiredly, something hidden, something he’d never seen there before. And it was as though she was maybe using a disguise and underneath, underneath that beaten, sad look, she was maybe mocking him, waiting for him to get soft, show a weak spot. A damn disguise.

She’d nearly got him, too, in those first months after they’d married. All innocent, naturally, least that’s the way she’d acted it. Nineteen years younger than him. Sure, maybe he’d had a weak spot once, scared of being made fun of. Like her laughing first time she saw him naked, saw he was a little bow-legged.

Ah, the old man remembered, but he got back control fast! Took her game and beat her to hell and back on it. Easy. Easiest thing in the world. Like that time he’d waited until she got home from a party he’d made her go to, and then told her that her slip had been showing all night. Ah, but the best one was that time she’d spent two hours, two days, if you consider the whole thing, getting ready for that first Sunday with his relatives, and then they’d been on the way, halfway there, and he’d told her, real kind like, nothing outright smart about it, that she had on way too much makeup and that dress she had on, the dress and the makeup, well, it kind of made her look exactly like a whore. And then afterwards, coming home from that first Sunday—been about a dozen of his relatives there—he’d told her they’d shamed him by telling him his wife was like a child, always hanging on him, a clinging vine. When actually what they’d said was how nice it was that he and she were so affectionate, holding hands and all that.

Well, he’d got her all right. Beat her silly at her own game. She never once after that, never dared again to make any fun of him.

“So go ahead and look, damn you,” the old man muttered, staring at his wife’s picture. “Think you’re laughing at me under that damn sheep look. But I got your number, got you down good, and you ain’t never goin’ to win nothin’.”

The old man felt better now. He reached down to pick up the newspaper, but then decided to close his eyes for a moment and rest a bit more.

*****

When the old man awoke, he felt chilled and clammy. He looked up at his wife’s clock. Nearly 2:30. Well, he thought, the day is going and that fool sign said “Today” and ain’t nothin’ happened.

He got up stiffly and went to the kitchen where he warmed up some left-overs, ate standing up, and then brought back some coffee to have with his paper.

He read the obituaries, the want ads, and then the personals. It was near the bottom of the personals: “S.M. tonight. Seven. Y.X.”

The sentence blurred as the old man stared at it. He tried to read the next personal below and then abruptly could think of nothing at all. His hands began to tremble, rustling the newspaper. He lifted his hands a moment as though they were independent agents, apart from him. Then he clutched the paper grimly and read the personal again.

His initials all right, but the initials of a thousand other people, he thought. Probably a love message. A meeting on the sly. Y.X. Probably phony. Nobody had initials like that. Besides, the sign had said today, not tonight. Seven.

The old man looked up at his wife’s clock. For a moment, the clock was blurred. As he stared at it, its vague outline appeared to move. The cherubs seemed to be sliding together at the top in obscene union. The old man sat up and squinted. Twenty after four. Three—no, two and a half hours until seven. A long time. Seven. It didn’t mean a thing. Seven tonight. The cat. Where was the cat?

Everything in the old man suddenly centered on the cat. He had to find the cat. Bring the cat in, have the cat lying there, start from that, everything would be all right.

The old man stood up abruptly and nearly fell as the unaccustomed dizziness came upon him again. He waited a moment, shook his head wearily, and then started for the door, concentrating on nothing but the cat.

He unlocked the door automatically, stepped out. The cat was in the middle of the sidewalk halfway to the street.

“Cat,” the old man called as he came near. “Wake up, you ol’ bastard.”

A few feet away, he sensed it but couldn’t see, and then he was on the other side of the cat and saw its eyes open and mouth open with the worn teeth exposed, and he saw the clean bone, naked white, protruding from its broken neck, and the light red blood glistening in the sun, the blood touching the neck and then extending out and down on the sidewalk forming a nearly perfect number SEVEN.

The old man cried out, a shrill unintelligible sound like a seagull, and staggered in a half circle, looking wildly, blindly about him. Then, quickly looking at and away from the cat, he moved to one side and toward the house, but he stopped abruptly and turned to hurry to the street. He saw the cat again, just as his foot was descending upon it. He twisted his body awkwardly to the left and felt his ankle collapse in the instant of consciousness before he fell heavily over the cat and struck the sidewalk face down.

*****

When the old man regained awareness it was twilight. He lay motionless, listening. He heard nothing. He moved his head slowly to one side. His nose was numb. He could feel the dried blood on it and knew it was broken. Very slowly, listening intently, he began to move. He was distantly aware that his ankle was broken. The sharp pain was there, unbearable if he thought about it.

He felt rather than saw the darkness as he inched along the sidewalk until he was turned toward the house. He saw the exposed white bone on the cat’s neck as he crawled by, pulling his way with his elbows.

As the old man came closer to the front door, his breathing grew louder through his open mouth and he choked briefly on his spittle. He crawled the last few feet in increasing terror as he heard the sounds of his body betraying him to the unseen enemy.

At the open door the old man half rose, then fell forward and sideways and attempted to close the door before his legs were completely in. Tears ran down his face as he got the door closed and lay gasping on the floor. Suddenly he cried out again and struggled upright against the door to put the bolt in the upper lock.

Holding on to the wall, he hobbled in the dark to the front room, and then crawled to his chair. He tried desperately to find the switch on the lamp by the chair, found it with shaking hands, turned on the light, then knocked the lamp over onto his lap. He held the lamp up to see the clock.

Twelve minutes until seven.

He quickly turned off the light, still holding the lamp in his lap. He listened. He could hear only the heavy ticking of the clock. He had never been so frightened in his life. He was alone. Everything outside the house, the house itself, was closing in. The enemy was listening, waiting, ready to strike. He could feel the enemy, he almost knew the enemy, he could sense it, almost remember. The crime, the guilt, the unspeakable, the horrible revenge. He felt it, could almost know it. It had him. There was no escape. The unthinkable would happen, it was coming, it had to be, he could almost know what it was. It would be terrible, the most terrible thing of all. The time, the time—

The old man feverishly switched the light on. Three minutes until seven. He left the light on and stared at the clock, listening to the seconds. He thought once of the cat as his pulse began beating louder in his head. He heard the sounds outside coming closer, and it was part of the throbbing near-explosion in his head. Not yet, his mind screamed. Not yet! Not yet!

The old man stared blindly at the clock. He heard the muffled sound at the door and cried, “Not yet!” And then as the pounding in his head reached explosion he fell forward, eyes protruding, face frozen, the old man knew the enemy who had come for revenge, and in the last seconds of his life, he heard the crash, the rushing steps, the giggles, the taunting onslaught of youth, the wicked life force pressing in on him, triumphant youth.